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Saturday, 8 December 2012

Jazz.....My Take On It (Part 1)

Duke Ellington was once asked what he thought jazz was
all about and he answered “It’s all music.”

There are people who live and breathe jazz. Some of them
have whole walls of vinyl records of the greats and the more obscure in their
living rooms. There are folks who can tell you who played with who and when.
Some have met jazz musicians in their lives and have formed personal
relationships with them. Some might even feel that they are part of a small unofficial
club. At best, jazz has a small market place. It isn’t kid’s music and requires
more attention. To play the music requires a lot of skill. It is almost
impossible to fake.

Like most other baby boomers, I grew up on rock and roll.
A few years later it was folk music. Then came the British invasion. For me
personally, rock started to fade away in the early 1980s although there were
still some good tunes every now and then.

I was always aware of jazz growing up but never really
looked at the music in any depth. Occasionally on TV in the 1950s and 1960s I
would see some of the jazz greats but most often they were doing tunes in the
pop music fashion, Peggy Lee singing Fever, Sarah Vaughan singing Broken
Hearted Melody, Louis Armstrong and Hello Dolly. On a rare occasion you might
see Dave Brubeck and Take Five or Erroll Garner playing Misty.

Montreal, where I grew up, was part of the circuit for
great jazz musicians over the years. Maynard Ferguson, Oscar Peterson, and
Oliver Jones all grew up in Montreal. I remember once listening to a radio
interview with Billy Eckstine. I think Montreal had a warm place in the hearts
a lot of black jazz musicians as it was an open city with not much racism.﻿﻿﻿

﻿

Oscar Peterson

In 1968 I lived in a boarding house in the west end of
Vancouver for a few months without a TV and only a radio. Every night I would
listen to a guy named Jack Cullen. He had one of the largest record collections
in the world. If anyone was an authority on music other than rock and roll this
guy was. His musical knowledge stretched all the way back to the late 1920s. He
was a big fan of big band music and crooners and he was great at telling
stories about musicians he had met or seen over the years.

﻿

Jack Cullen

In late 1971 I was living in Toronto and we used to get
drunk at a Holiday Inn sometimes after work while watching a really funny and
dirty Irish comedian. One evening I staggered out of the washroom and heard
some music coming from a large room nearby. I stumbled in and found a seat. A
small jazz orchestra was playing. I was only a few feet away. One guy caught my
eye. There was a highball glass by his feet and every so often he would take a
nip. When his turn came, he brought the horn up to his lips and played
incredibly. At least I thought so. His drinking alcohol and his musical talent
left an impression on me. A lot of jazz musicians have obviously had problems
with alcohol and hard drugs over the years.

About a year later I was living in an attic room in a
downtown Toronto rooming house and had borrowed a record player from a guy from
across the hall. One day I was in Sam The Record Man`s leafing through some
albums when I came across one I decided to buy. It was a double album of big
band music. I can still remember some of the tunes, Artie Shaw`s Begin The
Beguine and Frenesi, Duke Ellington`s Take The A Train, and Bunny Berigan`s I
Can`t Get Started. I was hooked on big band music from the 1930s and 1940s.

Some years later I became fascinated with Artie Shaw.
There is no doubt that in his personal life he was one damned ornery individual
but there is no doubting his musical genius. The guy led one amazing life.
Married some of the most beautiful women in the world, was at the top of his
game for close to 10 years, lived in exotic places, and packed it all in trying
to find some sanity in it all. There is a rumour that he made a lamp out of his
clarinet. On top of all that he lived into his nineties and was teaching music
up until his death.

Artie Shaw

The first live jazz I ever saw was around 1975 in
Hamilton, Ontario, the high octane Maynard Ferguson. His orchestra was made up
of mostly college kids. It kept the overhead costs down I guess. Man oh man
Maynard could blast it.

Maynard Fergusson

It wasn`t until the early 1980s that I started to buy
jazz records and really get to see a number of live jazz groups. One weekend we
were down in Seattle Washington for a weekend and staying at a Holiday Inn in
Bellevue. We decided to grab a cocktail before bed and wandered into a tiny
bar. A black guy was tinkling on the piano. We didn`t know it at the time but
the place, although small, was full of regulars. People sitting at the bar were
called over individually to join the piano player and sing a song or two. It
was one of those sweet memorable evenings for me.

I started to delve into jazz. I tried to break it down a
bit. I knew most of the names of the greats but I was interested in the music
also in a historical sense. I bought a number of compilations and discovered a
lot of great tunes. I also got my hands on a number of books about jazz.
﻿

I love swing and big band music and really don`t give a
shit about jazz perfectionists who think this music was too plastic and contrived.
I could listen to a lot of Glenn Miller, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Artie Shaw,
Benny Goodman any old time. Smooth or jump it all had a sweetness to it. I am
not embarrassed to say I liked Tex Beneke, Helen Forrest or The Andrews
Sisters.

I can`t say I was always a big fan of Bop. I prefer music
with a melody even if the musicians wander away from it for a while. I can
appreciate Miles Davis but sometimes he lost me. Dizzy Gillespie too. Not
always. Just sometimes. It isn`t hard to see the genius in Charlie Parker.

Over the years I have been a big fan of crooners.

Billy Holliday was haunting. Peggy Lee was simply
amazing. Blues In The Night and Why Don`t You Do Right are as good as it gets
as far as I am concerned. Ella Fitzgerald is in a league of her own. She had such
a pure clear voice and was one hell of a scat singer. Dinah Washington and
Anita O`Day could always deliver. I always had a soft spot for Dinah Shore but
there were better women singers.

Peggy Lee

My kids grew up listening to Sinatra in the car. They
still know a lot of his lyrics. I loved most of his music although he could get
a bit corny at times. Nat King Cole was a damned fine piano player aside from
being a great singer. Tony Bennett can still cut it. Mel Torme was probably the
best male scat singer but could be a bit on the hokey side. Sammy Davis Jr. had
a great voice but was terrible at picking songs. Lou Rawls with his baritone
voice and Dean Martin were good singers but you could count on one hand good
songs that they sung. Loved Chet Baker but he wasn`t someone a depressed person
should listen to. Luckily for me I am not the depressed type. I know jazz buffs
like to bring up the name of Johnny Hartman but unfortunately the guy didn`t
ever have a real signature tune.

Frank Sinatra

I`ve always been partial to up tempo lively Latin jazz
with that scratching sound in the background. I`ll take me some Stan Getz
anytime. If I have choice between happy and reflective I`ll take happy.

Stan Getz

﻿

In the 1980s and 1990s I found that I could afford to go
and see pretty well anyone I wanted in the jazz genre when they came to
Vancouver. I saw Paul Horn at a joint on 4th Avenue. We sat about 5
feet away. We saw The Manhattan Transfer at the QE Theatre and Earl Klugh and
Maceo Parker at the Commodore Ballroom. I saw Frank Sinatra the last time he
came through Vancouver out at the Pacific Coluseum. Sammy was the only one left
with a voice. Dean was out of it. His son had died a year or two before. Old
blue eyes, old red eyes, and old one eye….hey it`s a joke!

Paul Horn

I saw Michael Buble when he was starting out at a club
called BaBalu in the basement of a hotel on Granville Street. I had no idea he
would become so big. I can`t think of two better crooners to have the jazz
torch passed to than Michael Buble and Nanaimo`s own Diana Krall.

Diana Krall

I got to see Ray Brown, the great jazz bassist, on his
last trip through Vancouver when he appeared at Rossini`s in Kits. Also saw the
Five Blind Men From Alabama at a big church in Burnaby one night. As an
atheist, even I was carried away in the fervor. I was half expecting to see
John Belushi doing summersaults.

Ray Brown

In the mid 90s I split up with my wife and found myself
with more time to go out and explore Vancouver`s nightlife. I didn`t want to be
the old guy hanging around a younger crowd kind of joint and I kind of
naturally gravitated to places where I might fit in. Most of these places were
jazz places. I hung around the Fairview Pub on Broadway a bit on jazz nights. I
warmed a stool from time to time at Rossini`s in Kits. Linton Garner, the
brother of Erroll Garner, was the house piano player.(Erroll often mumbled
while playing the piano.)

I saw Kenny Coleman a number of times including at the
revolving restaurant on top of the Sheraton Hotel on Robson. Had a few brief
chats with him, once in a club he owned and once when I was having lunch in
Richmond with my ex and he was sitting at the next table. This guy truly has
had an amazing life. He is pretty decent singer too.

I started going to jazz festivals in the 90s including
The Vancouver Jazz Festival. I even went to one on the Hood River in Oregon.
Mostly I saw musicians that were not big names. There are some amazing not so
well known talents out there.

I moved over to Vancouver Island (semi-retirement) and a
place I owned in Fanny Bay in 2005. I took in the North Island Jazz Festival in
Courtenay, BC. I think it has ceased operation. They had a pretty formidable
venue, two different buildings and something going on in both buildings at the
same time. A couple of things really impressed me. One was the first zydeco
band I had ever seen. (A few years later I saw Buckwheat Zydeco at the Queens
in Nanaimo.) The other thing that stuck in my mind was watching a young high
school gal singing and being accompanied by a clarinetist who seemed to be in
his eighties. There are no age barriers in jazz.

After a couple of years in Fanny Bay, I decided to move
down to Victoria. The best jazz joint in town was and probably still is, is a
place called Herman`s. Spent a number of nights in that place. Also took in the
Victoria Jazz Festival. A lot of these festivals bring in musicians and groups
from Europe. Jazz is truly a universal type of music.

The last jazz concert I attended was one with pianist
Oliver Jones (from Montreal) and a combo at the Port Theatre in Nanaimo. That
was about 2 or 3 years ago.

I have a damned good music system but I hardly ever use
it. I have wide collection of jazz CDs but I hardly ever listen to them. Wynton
Marcalis, Eddie Daniels, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, David
Sanborn. That kind of stuff.

David Sanborn

A couple of years ago I discovered what some top quality
speakers can do with a computer. About once or twice a week I take a musical
walk through You Tube. Sometimes I listen to jazz. Sometimes I listen to other
music. Sometimes we light up a joint and listen for hours. Call me an old fool.
I’ve been called worse.

I expect to see and listen to a lot more jazz in my life.
I’m just not obsessed with it. I certainly don’t want to sound preachy but…I
firmly believe that variety is truly the spice of life. There are times when
music is a focal point or a great background and other times are good without
any music at all. There is also something to be said about absence makes the
heart grow fonder. It is nice to know that it can always be pulled out of the
bag.

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About Me

I grew up in Montreal and have spent most of my life living in the Vancouver, B.C. area where I was a businessman for many years. I am now retired and living on Vancouver Island with Linda Spenard and our golden retriever Shelby. R.I.P. Cooper. I have 2 kids, twins, Dean and Leah who are 29.
I can be reached at my e-mail address colinatcove@shaw.ca
Pictures of some of our travels can be found on Picasa.
http://picasaweb.google.com/colinincanada (hasn't been updated for some time).
A special thanks to my older brother David for letting me use his old photos.
Thanks also to Linda Spenard for her photos and support.